PiDrive Raspberry Pi HDD from Western Digital gives the little PC big storage

By Jon Martindale September 10, 2015

western digital pidrive 1tb storage raspberry pi wdpidrive — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Although Raspeberry Pi computers tend to be used for quite small and simple tasks, which are well suited to their (relatively) low powered hardware, that doesn’t mean some of those functions couldn’t be augmented by a hardware upgrade. Traditionally USB drives and SD cards have offered gigabytes of space to Pi users, but Western Digital wants to up the ante, with a newly compatible one terabyte hard drive, known as the PiDrive.

Of course this wouldn’t be news if this HDD wasn’t a little bit different than your average storage drive. It comes without the usual SATA interface desktop and laptop users are used to, and instead employs a modified USB 3.0 header which allows for a direct connection to the Pi’s USB port. Better yet, it also hooks up to the power port and the power adaptor, which means that you can power both the drive and Pi from the same source, with a single cable.

It also has a built in 4GB MicroSD card to handle an operating system if desired and supports both the Raspberry Pi Model B+ and the Pi 2 Model B.

But of course this isn’t the first time that an enterprising hacker has put together a Pi that boots from or can store information to a hard drive. Traditionally though, a powered USB hub was required to provide data transfer and power to the drive. By removing that need and giving the Pi a new powerbrick in the same breath, it makes a newly equipped Pi much neater.

If you’re still on the fence, the guys over at ProjectPi gave it a sterling thumbs up and they even have a 35 percent discount code (WDPiDrive111) for U.S. and U.K. customers, bringing the standard $80 price tag down to a very reasonable $52 plus shipping.

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